From Batting to Book Reviews – and everything in between

A Night at the Cinema – A Blunder unforgettable & a mayhem to savour

After what seemed to be an interminable wait following a never ending sequence of advertisements irritable (a KFC ad showing in obnoxious detail 8 different ways in which a chicken could be bit into), and trailers insipid (gangsters and ghosts contended so much for the bragging rights for the next release that at times the distinguishing lines between the two were blurred), the lights finally dimmed and the screen adjusted itself to the usual size befitting a cinemascope. The determined crunching of popcorn and the contended slurping of carbonated drinks served as appetizers of anticipation. However, the fact that Ashita and I were seated in unenviable seats occupying the second row from the screen did not make for a setting that could be termed comfortable. Craning our necks and looking straight up, we were like a pair of excited storks gawking at the launch of Apollo 13! Only the launch time of Apollo 13 was approximately 2 hours shorter than our positional inevitability.

When the movie finally started, there was virtual mayhem and a comical melee in the cinema hall. An absent minded professor and/or a dimwit (and everything in between) had projected the WRONG movie (yes you read it right!). Instead of the originally scheduled Varun Dhawan-Anushka Sharma starrer ‘Sui Dhaga – Made In India’, Cinema Hall No.1 belonging to Golden Screen Cinemas in Nu Sentral Mall, Kuala Lumpur decided on an unpopular whim that the audience deserved to watch a Tamil movie titled “Ekantham” (Loneliness) instead! Imagine the consternation of a packed and hollering crowd at the Eden Gardens, when after winning the toss and electing to bat, India sends in Venkatesh Prasad striding out to open the batting instead of Sachin Tendulkar!

However, the ill timed attempt to inculcate a sense of ‘loneliness’ amongst a band of tired homo sapiens backfired as a miffed mob hurtled its way out the exit doors to find, explain and educate the culprit. Hopefully, a forceful massage and a couple of discounted bones were not on the menu! Extremely keen to both participate in the action and vent her frustration, Ashita sprung out of her seat a la Jack In The Box and turning her gaze in a direction which she had decided was where the projector was located, commenced shrieking “It’s the wrong movie” over and over again. Although no credible or tangible purpose was accomplished by this hollering, she sure gained ample attention and more than succeeded in triggering a herd mentality. “It’s the wrong movie” became such a vociferous and addictive chant that for a few fleeting seconds, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” was in danger of experiencing unfortunate and spontaneous oblivion!

Before proceeding to highlight the manner in which (if at all) the linguistic predicament of a hundred confused souls was resolved, it is apposite to write a few lines about Ashita. If at all anyone deserves to be feted by Bollywood for nursing an unshakable faith in their production lines, it has to be Ashita. Since the time she has been capable of possessing a memory and the faculty of speech, there has not been a single Hindi movie that has escaped either her prying eyes or her prodigious memory. In fact, she can hold forth and wax eloquent over movies the nuances of which even the actors have either forgotten (conveniently) or ended up wishing that they had forgotten (regrettably)! For a person like me who occasionally visits the cinema, motivated more by the prospects of collecting a superhero water bottle (that comes along with a ridiculously expensive and vile tasting popcorn combo) than by the on screen antiques, Ashita is an unparalleled wonder to behold!

The pandemonium was now taking on comical proportions. While one half of the crowd was jeering yet keeping their eyes locked on the patterns that “Loneliness” was taking on the screen, (after all who does not want to see a cinema for free, even if the actors are rattling about in Swahili), the rest were, with their backs to the cinema waving arms, clenching fists, standing upon chairs and generally yelling whatever were the first words that came to them. I would not have been one bit surprised if I had heard cries of “Sachin Sachin” punctuated with “Inqlaab Zindabad!” The confusion finally came to a merciful conclusion when the by now chastised and hopefully all-bones-in-piece personnel manning the projector took off the Tamil movie and projected the Yash Raj films banner on the silver screen. It was 30 minutes beyond the originally stipulated show time.

But it was thirty minutes the likes of which I had never ever experienced in my lifetime. It was thirty minutes of gathering uncertainties, gallivanting human emotions and more than anything else, gloriously gregarious Ashita!

Even ‘Sui Dhaga’ could not have been tailored to accord such imperfect perfections!